North East RadioWatch: February 26, 1999

A Time For Farewells...

It's not quite spring yet (although we'll take the sunny weather of
upstate New York over the nor'easter of New England, thanks!), but it
seemed like a spring-cleaning week all over the radio dials. On the
national scene, Doug Tracht (aka "Greaseman") was fired from his
morning gig at CBS' WARW (94.7 Bethesda MD-Washington DC) in the wake
of a racially inflammatory comment on his Wednesday show.

In MAINE, Bonnie Grant is leaving her post as general manager of WPOR
(101.9/1490 Portland) after years with the station. Saga told
staffers this week that it plans to move WPOR out of its current home
on Baxter Blvd. and into the building at 420 Western Ave. in South
Portland that now houses Saga's other Portland outlets, WGAN, WZAN,
WMGX, and WYNZ. As part of the process, Saga market manager Cary
Pahigian adds GM responsibilities for WPOR -- which left Grant with
the choice of the sales manager job she held before becoming GM, or a
departure for other work.

We're told Saga will convert a storage area in the rear of the
building to offices to replace those being converted to WPOR's
studios.

Meantime, the rest of the Saga stations are getting a new news and
programming coordinator. Doug Tribeau joins the group to replace
departed news director Leslie Doppler and WGAN/WZAN PD Dave Winsor
(who's still at Western Avenue, but now focused on the WGAN morning
show). Tribeau was with Eagle Broadcasting's four-station group
(WHCU, WTKO, WYXL, WQNY) in Ithaca, New York.

Up the Maine Turnpike a bit, changes are in the works at Cumulus'
Augusta-market group. We're told WKCG (101.3 Augusta) is running
promos telling listeners that beginning Monday (3/1), the country
format will move to 96.7 and 93.5 FM. The 96.7 is WCME Boothbay
Harbor, which has been simulcasting WKCG for several months anyway.
The 93.5 is WCTB Fairfield, which had a diverse AC format as "The
River," went to all-Christmas music last December, then returned to
AC. NERW notes that WCTB wasn't originally included in Cumulus'
purchase of sister station WTOS (105.1 Skowhegan) last year. The
rumor in the market has 101.3 going CHR as "The Buzz," which if true
would set up a most interesting small-market CHR war with established
contender WMME (92.3 "The Moose"). More on this one next week...

Quirky Small-Market Format Alert: We're told that since WAYD (105.5
Islesboro) signed on earlier this month, it's been running a live,
local (!) classic jazz and big band format. We've gotta hear this
one.

A new station is on the air in NEW HAMPSHIRE. WVNH (91.1 Concord)
began testing on Monday. The Capital City Educational Foundation will
run 24 hours a day of Moody Bible Institute programming (from WMBI-FM
90.1 Chicago) until local programming begins in a few months. WVNH is
also ID'ing with Laconia, and operating from a transmitter site about
halfway between the two communities. Read more at
<http://www.wvnh.org/>, the station's Web site.

We begin the MASSACHUSETTS news this week with more departures, most
prominently those of the "Two Chicks Dishing." Leslie Gold and Lori
Kramer held down nights at WRKO (680) for the last few years, but the
partnership that began at WMMM in Westport CT and moved on to WRKO for
weekends couldn't survive the weeknight pressure, it seems. Their
contracts expired Friday (2/26), and WRKO PD Kevin Straley decided not
to renew, so now it's back to New York City for Kramer and back to the
job hunt for Gold. What's next for 7-10 PM on The Talk Station?
Among the names we've heard mentioned are political pundit Michael
Goldman and Lowell's Paul Sullivan, who is himself another departure
this week. Sullivan's final show on WLLH (1400 Lowell-Lawrence) was
Friday morning, as the station heads for Mega Broadcasting ownership
and a switch to all-Spanish. Big changes on the way for Merrimack
Valley radio? Sure sounds that way, from some of the rumors floating
up and down 495...

Still more departures: After 20 years on the Boston noncommercial
radio scene, Greg Reibman hangs up the headphones with a final
"Rockin' with Greg" show Saturday morning (2/27) on WMBR (88.1
Cambridge). Reibman is a fixture on the Hub's print scene as well,
now serving as deputy managing editor for arts and entertainment at
the Herald. Reibman says he wants to spend more time
with family; we wish him well (and we'd love to hear from anyone who's
able to tape his last show from 10-noon on Saturday!)

And still more departures: We hear the entire sales staff of Alex
Langer's WSRO (1470 Marlborough) was shown the door this week, as was
morning guy Dave O'Gara. WSRO is reportedly going all-satellite, and
we're told things are less than rosy at sister talker WRPT (650
Ashland) as well. As for the rumors that several well-known Boston
talkers will return to the airwaves on Langer's 1060 spot when it
powers up with 40 kilowatts later this year? We'll keep you posted.

Nobody's leaving WJMN (94.5 Boston), but there are some shift changes
in the works over on Bear Hill Road. Ralphie Marino is moving from
middays to afternoons on "Jam'n," bumping Lady K to midday duty.

LPTV News: W29BA Lawrence (which we believe is still an unbuilt CP)
wants to move to channel 24.

Oh Yeah, We Almost Forgot: It must have something to do with being
300+ miles from Fenway Park, or else we'd have given greater
prominence to the deal the Red Sox have reached to put their telecasts
this year on WLVI (Channel 56), replacing WABU (Channel 68) as the
Sox' flagship. Too bad we don't get WB56 here at NERW Central; we
really want to see Clemens pitching at Fenway in pinstripes...

A departure in RHODE ISLAND this week, but it's not (directly) in
broadcasting: Providence Journal-Bulletin TV/radio
correspondent John Martin will leave the paper at the end of next week
to take a job as spokesman for the Rhode Island Economic Development
Corp. Martin was one of the few broadcast writers who knew whereof he
wrote; he first joined the ProJo family as a talk host on
WEAN (790; now WSKO) back in 1980. We'll miss reading his
knowledgeable, witty columns, and we wish him well in his new job.

CONNECTICUT is losing a veteran general manager. After 20 years at
WEZN-FM (Star 99.9) in Bridgeport, Jim Morley is moving on to new
fields. Morley helped to build the NewCity radio group, which was
purchased by Cox in 1997. His replacement comes from within WEZN;
John Ryan moves up from general sales manager.

As we'd suspected, Hartford's WPOP (1410) is replacing One-on-One
Sports with ESPN Radio. The new format at "ESPN Radio 1410" includes
a local show from 4-7 PM hosted by several Hartford Courant
sportswriters, along with play-by-play of the Hartford Wolf Pack, New
Britain Rock Cats, CCSU Blue Devils basketball, and the New York
Yankees.

There's an updated WPOP page
<http://www.angelfire.com/biz/sports1410/> already available,
thanks to Connecticut radio buff Marc Bramhall. Also on the Web are
official pages from Bristol's WPRX, complete
with .WAV files of the legal ID and jingles (!), and also from Groton CHR WQGN.

NEW YORK, too, has its comings and goings this week, with Long Island
at center stage. As Carl Liu (son of NYC leased-time guru Arthur)
gets ready to buy WLVG (96.1 Center Moriches), the AC station is losing its
PD and morning host. PD Stefan Rybak left this week, and morning guy
Marty Mitchell is leaving as well (though he keeps his weekend gig on
quad-cast country Y107 surrounding New York). Liu's deal is worth
between $3 million and $3.5 million and includes an LMA of up to 3
years with current owner Gary Starr, according to the M Street folks.

Over at WBLI (106.1 Patchogue), Cox stays within the corporate family
by bringing in its PD from sister CHR WWHT (107.9 Syracuse). Less
than a year after making "Hot 107.9" his first PD gig, J.J. Rice heads
down the Thruway and out the L.I.E. to make his mark on the
Nassau/Suffolk market. We're proud to say we "knew him when" (as
APD/MD at Rochester's WPXY), and we wish him all the best on the
Island.

While we're down in the Big Apple, we can clarify the WLIB situation.
There is a night signal now on 1190 from New York, and it's being
heard well by NERW readers across New England -- but up here in
upstate New York, we're deep in the null. Combined with the WOWO
powerdown, that means that all we hear on 1190 up here now is the hash
from WHAM next door...but that doesn't stop us from checking back once
in a while for, say, Dallas or Guadalajara, just in case.

As we head up I-87 to the Capital District, we'll get off quickly near
Kingston to note one more cool thing about the webcast from WDST
(100.1 Woodstock). In addition to the live feed of the station itself,
they're also putting out a separate feed called Radio Woodstock that's just
for the benefit of Web listeners. In a AAA-deprived market like
Rochester, the webcasts from stations like WDST, WNCS, KPIG, and WRSI
really make a difference...and we've gotta wonder, if Steve Silberberg
can do it for WNCS, why not a live feed of Haverhill's WXRV?
(Please?)

Up in Albany, the Yankees games dumped from WPTR (96.3 Voorheesville)
when it became urban WAJZ have a new home elsewhere in the Albany
Broadcasting family. WSRD (104.9 Johnstown, soon to be Altamont) will
pick up the Yanks for the Albany area this season.

Albany's modern rocker, WQBK (103.9 Rensselaer)/WQBJ (103.5 Cobleskill),
has a new program director. Rod Ryan was assistant PD and afternoon
guy at KKND (106.7 Houma LA) in the New Orleans market.

And just what the heck is going on at K100 (WKLI 100.9 Albany/WKBE
100.3 Warrensburg), anyway? We noticed the format was heading pretty
heavily towards modern AC when we drove through last week...and now
Gavin Burt checks in from our Capital Bureau (just like WRGB, "We're
Everywhere!"), to report that the station's now jockless. The last
modern AC in the area was the late, lamented, and now-jammin' oldies
WXLE (104.5 Mechanicville). K100 is in the process of being sold to
Tele-Media; we wonder if this is related somehow.

An LPTV note before we pick up our toll ticket at exit 24 and head
west: WMHT's W04BD Glens Falls has applied to move from channel 4 way
the heck up to channel 65, another casualty of DTV displacement.

Paying our $6.30 at Victor, we get off the Thruway to find a new
positioner for the religious trimulcast on WASB (1590/105.5 Brockport)
and WRSB (1310 Canandaigua). "Sunshine Radio Network" is how
Dr. Wolfe is now identifying his stations, and the ID mentions the FM
for the first time since it signed on late last year (and only a true
ID grouch like yours truly would be troubled by the lack of an "-FM"
in said ID, something WMAX-FM South Bristol is also failing to do).
WASB-FM is due to be sold to Canandaigua's Russ Kimble, and we can
only hope he'll do something about the station's audio, which has to
be the worst we've ever heard on FM -- there's bound to be something
down there beneath the buzzes and squeals, but it's hard to tell!

DTV in Rochester? In our lifetimes? Sure looks that way, as the
public broadcasting types over on State Street apply for WXXI-DT on
channel 16. On the LPTV end of things, W47BM's color bars have now
been gone for two months...and there's still no sign of the east side
transmitter WBGT-LP (Channel 40) has been promising, so UPN remains
more a myth than a reality here at NERW Central, deep in the RF shadow
of Pinnacle Hill. (Actually, given that it's UPN, maybe we're better
off that way...)

As for PaxTV, it may yet show up on the UHF loop here. WPXJ-TV
(Channel 51) in Batavia, the long-unbuilt Pax CP for Buffalo and
Rochester, has applied to change transmitter sites yet again. The
latest plan puts the tower just south of Route 63 and not far outside
Batavia, giving the 5 megawatt signal about an equal distance (35
miles or so) to both Rochester and Buffalo.

More Rochester stations are diving into the waters of Webcasting.
Over at the Rochester Institute of Technology, WITR (89.7 Henrietta)
is now available in RealAudio through its site, which has got
to win the "ungainly URL of the week award," not to mention taking
forever to load up even with the help of the trusty NERW cable modem.
On the other hand, WITR at least provides a proper legal ID once an
hour, unlike Rochester's first noncomm Webcaster, WBER, and it's a good listen for its
blend of modern music and, well, more -- particularly the rap
programming in morning drive (whatever wakes you up on the way to
work...)

Classical music fans will appreciate the webcast of public radio WXXI-FM that went on line this month.
In addition to the usual NPR syndicated fare, WXXI-FM offers lots of
locally-produced music programming (check out this Sunday afternoon's
Black History Month concert to hear the Mayor of Rochester play the
piano with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra) and intelligent music
hosts, particularly Simon Pontin in the mornings.

Last but far from least in the Empire State, Buffalo's WNED (970)
appears to have been saved from extinction for the moment, but not
without creating some friction on the local noncomm scene. The
Western New York Public Broadcasting Authority had said WNED's news
and talk format was losing money, and had planned to shut down
programming, instead simulcasting the NPR news, talk, and jazz from
SUNY Buffalo's WBFO (88.7). After the news broke, listeners and the
community called on WNED to reconsider, and the station responded by
launching a nine-day pledge drive last weekend to raise $150,000
needed to run the AM. WNED raised $70,000 of that in the first two
days alone, along with $100,000 in cash and advertising space from the
Buffalo News. If the fund drive succeeds, WNED will hire
a consultant to examine the AM's future, including the possibility of
replacing "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered," already heard
on WBFO, with local news (which 970 used to run in its WEBR days).

In the meantime, WBFO general manager Jennifer Roth has been publicly
critical of her WNED counterpart, Don Boswell. In a Wednesday
Buffalo News article, Roth said "a lot of time had been
wasted" at WBFO working out a plan (at Boswell's suggestion) to
simulcast on 970, only to have WNED withdraw the offer. (In fairness,
Boswell walked into a minefield at WNED; he's had to deal with the PR
nightmare engendered by the lavish headquarters building that was the
final project of his predecessor, as well as delays in the sale of
WNEQ-TV, which was to have provided cash to fund WNED's operations and
its conversion to DTV.)

In the meantime, Buffalo News readers are greeted daily
with an appeal to pledge money to support WNED(AM)'s future. We'll
keep you posted on the campaign's progress.

Across the border, the CHR on 92.5 in Toronto is now on its second
name in as many weeks. It seems Rogers Broadcasting didn't check to
see what nicknames were already in use in the market when it replaced
country CISS with CHR "Power" -- and the result was a lawsuit from
CKDX (88.5 Newmarket), which has been "Power 88" for two years now.
Gone is "Power," in is "Kiss" (or is that "Ciss"?), and if there's
confusion with cross-market WKSE ("Kiss 98.5") Niagara Falls-Buffalo,
NERW suspects the U.S. Embassy will decline to intervene.

Meanwhile, the strike at the CBC drags on and on, and the effects on
the air are quite audible -- lots of repeats on "This Morning" and
other national shows, not to mention a lengthy interlude of
instrumental music Thursday afternoon before the temporary national
"Canada Today" midday show could get on the air; it seems the host had
been detained (by picketers?) outside the Ottawa studios. A
correction, by the way: the replacement afternoon show, "All in a
Day," comes from CBO Ottawa, not CBME Montreal, where workers are
covered by the French-language Radio-Canada contract and are
unaffected by the strike. And we're impressed that the CBC Web site has actually been
providing links to the sites of the
striking CEP union as well as to the CBC's own press releases and
schedules.

Has Ottawa's AM 1200 returned to its original CFGO calls? We can't
quite tell from the CRTC (no big surprise), but M Street reports that
"OSR 1200" dumped the CJBZ calls along with its "Buzz" rock format
last fall, and is once again CFGO -- not that you can ever tell on
those Canadian stations, anyway.

No, we can't finish the week without making mention of Mel
Karmazin's comment that he'd "overpay" for the chance to buy NBC from
General Electric if the rules allowed it. This latest incursion into
mega-merger fantasyland still has many more questions than answers,
particularly when it comes to the one part of NBC that Karmazin
probably wants most: those profitable O&Os in New York, Hartford,
Providence, and so many other markets around the country. Could the
FCC ever be persuaded to allow one company to own two VHFs in one
market? The latest crop of commissioners don't seem to be so
inclined, to put it mildly. Could the always profit-minded Karmazin
be thinking of spinning CBS' less-profitable O&Os and unprofitable
TV network off to someone else if he can get the more-profitable NBC
stations and network? What kind of equity would NBC parent GE end up
getting in CBS? After 12 years, could the "WNBC" call letters return
to radio at last? We don't have those answers, and right now, neither
does anyone else, but we'll be looking closely at it as it goes
wherever it's going.

And that's it for another week here in NERW-land...we'll be back
next Friday with more. See you then!